NetSuite users who sell through multiple channels face unique challenges when it comes to quoting shipping costs, especially in mixed online/direct/retail sales processes. Pacejet provides a set of features and integration that can help implement a centralized freight quote platform that easily manages all the shipment costing requirements that NetSuite users need to handle across disparate selling activities. Take a closer look at the infographic below and read on for more information.

Establishing a freight quoting process for all sales channels that uses accurate, negotiated carrier rates is an important first step to ensuring that basic prices are reasonably aligned with actual costs charged by carriers. When orders start to involve a mix of larger and smaller shipments, the quoting processes might need to handle both LTL/Freight quoting, as well as Parcel shipping carriers and services. Complications such as recent rule changes for dimensional pricing, requirements for accessorial services like Lift Gate or Delivery Notification, and special timing requirements can further complicate the quoting process. And finally, the diverse user experiences of quoting freight from within NetSuite transactions such as Estimates, Sales Orders, or Item Fulfillments while also supporting quotes on multiple e-commerce websites can make for some challenging business needs.

The Pacejet solution for freight quoting in multi-channel sales environments starts with a foundation of real-time connectivity with a network of carriers using your negotiated rate contracts. Price rules can be based off actual cost quotes retrieved in real-time from carriers and because the process is "carrier neutral", NetSuite users can start with one set of carriers and then add/change carriers over time as new channels require new carriers, customers demand them, or other business reasons require a change. Because the carrier network is integrated with NetSuite, better data can be used in the quoting process to, for example, perform packaging estimations based on item detail to more accurately predict number of boxes, dimensions, and other information.

With a foundation component of real-time carrier connectivity and quoting in place, Pacejet offers standard quoting support and use-cases across various NetSuite transaction types such as Estimates, Sales Orders, Item Fulfillments, and even Purchase Orders. Users managing those transactions can simply click "Quote" to activate Pacejet, review quote assumptions, quote and rate-shop in real-time, and make a choice (or go with the Pacejet recommendation) to update the appropriate transaction records with the selected Price, Cost, Carrier, and Service.

For e-commerce websites, Pacejet provides a single, central, consistent web service interface which uses the central quoting infrastructure to provide real-time quotes to website users. One or more sites can be configured to call the webservice with the "contents of the shopping cart" and leverage the same carriers, account setup, negotiated rates, packaging estimates, and other business rules to determine various carrier options in real-time. Using the same central service makes the entire process more consistent, easier to update, easier to manage, and less fragile as it's maintained over time.

Click here for more information on freight quotes with rate shopping, or contact Pacejet today for a demo of this cost-saving feature.

Pacejet loves to uncover shipping trends and truths that help us improve customer operations, save money, and move businesses forward. That's why we believe in the science of shipping—because companies are ever-evolving and data, analytics, and flashes of brilliance can help you get where you want to go.